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exiled into Gaul. It is said that, having gained over the individual who, by the emperor's order, kept the acts of the council, they had erased their signatures, and begun to teach in public that the Son must not be believed to be consubstantial with the Father.
Happily, to replace their signatures and preserve entire the mysterious number three hundred and eighteen, the expedient was tried of laying the book, in which the acts were divided into sessions, on the tomb of Chrysanthus and Mysonius, who had died while the council was in session; the night was passed in prayer and the next morning it was found that these two bishops had signed.
It was by an expedient nearly similar, that the fathers of the same council distinguished the authentic from the apocryphal books of Scripture. Having placed them altogether upon the altar, the apocryphal books fell to the ground of themselves.
Two other councils, assembled by the emperor Constantine, in the year 359, the one, of upwards of four hundred bishops, at Rimini, the other, of more than a hundred and fifty, at Seleucia; after long debates, rejected the word consubstantial, already condemned, as we have before said, by a Council of Antioch. But these councils are recognized only by the Socinians.
The Nicene fathers had been so much occupied with the consubstantiality of the Son, that they had made no mention of the church in their symbol, but contented themselves with saying, "We also believe in the Holy Ghost." This omission was supplied in the second general council, convoked at Constantinople, in 381, by Theodosius. The Holy Ghost was there declared to be the Lord and giver of life, proceeding from the Father, who with the Father and Son is worshipped and glorified, who spake by the prophets. Afterwards the Latin church would have the Holy Ghost proceed from the Son also; and the "filioque" was added to the symbol: first in Spain, in 447; then in France, at the Council of Lyons, in 1274; and lastly at Rome, notwithstanding the complaints made by the Greeks against this innovation.
The divinity of Jesus being once established, it was natural to give to his mother the title of Mother of God. However, Nestorius, patriarch of Constantinople, maintained in his sermons that this would be justifying the folly of the Pagans, who gave mothers to their gods. Theodosius the younger, to have this great question decided, assembled the third general council at Ephesus, in the year 431, and in it Mary was acknowledged to be the mother of God.
Another heresy of Nestorius, likewise condemned at Ephesus, was that of admitting two persons in Jesus. Nevertheless, the patriarch Photius subsequently acknowledged two natures in Jesus. A monk named Eutyches, who had already exclaimed loudly against Nestorius, affirmed, the better to contradict them both, that Jesus had also but one nature. But this time the monk was wrong; although, in 449, his opinion had been maintained by blows in a numerous council at Ephesus. Eutyches was nevertheless anathematized, two years afterwards, by the fourth general council, held under the emperor Marcian at Chalcedon, in which two natures were assigned to Jesus.
It was still to be determined, with one person and two natures, how many wills Jesus was to have. The fifth general council, which in the year 553 quelled, by Justinian's order, the contentions about the doctrine of three bishops, had no leisure to settle this important point. It was not until the year 680 that the sixth general council, also convened at Constantinople by Constantine Pogonatus, informed us that Jesus had precisely two wills. This council, in condemning the Monothelites, who admitted only one, made no exception from the anathema in favor of Pope Honorius I., who, in a letter given by Baronius, had said to the patriarch of Constantinople:
"We confess in Jesus Christ one only will. We do not see that either the councils or the Scriptures authorize us to think otherwise. But whether, from the works of divinity and of humanity which are in him, we are to look for two operations, is a point of little importance, and one which I leave it to the grammarians to decide."
Thus, in this instance, with God's permission, the account between the Greek and Latin churches was balanced. As the patriarch Nestorius had been condemned for acknowledging two persons in Jesus, so Pope Honorius was now condemned for admitting but one will in Jesus.
The seventh general council, or the second of Nice, was assembled in 787, by Constantine, son of Leo and Irene, to re-establish the worship of images. The reader must know that two Councils of Constantinople, the first in 730, under the emperor Leo, the other twenty-four years after, under Constantine Copronymus, had thought proper to proscribe images, conformably to the Mosaic law and to the usage of the early ages of Christianity. So, also, the Nicene decree, in which it is said that "whosoever shall not render service and adoration to the images of the saints as to the Trinity, shall be deemed anathematized," at first encountered some opposition. The bishops who introduced it, in a Council of Constantinople, held in 789, were turned out by soldiers. The same decree was also rejected with scorn by the Council of Frankfort in 794, and by the Caroline books, published by order of Charlemagne. But the second Council of Nice was at length confirmed at Constantinople under the emperor Michael and his mother Theodora, in the year 842, by a numerous council, which anathematized the enemies of holy images. Be it here observed, it was by two women, the empresses Irene and Theodora, that the images were protected.
We pass on to the eighth general council. Under the emperor Basilius, Photius, ordained patriarch of Constantinople in place of Ignatius, had the Latin church condemned for the "filioque" and other practices, by a council of the year 866: but Ignatius being recalled the following year, another council removed Photius; and in the year 869 the Latins, in their turn, condemned the Greek church in what they called the eighth general council—while those in the East gave this name to another council, which, ten years after, annulled what the preceding one had done, and restored Photius.
These four councils were held at Constantinople; the others, called general by the Latins, having been composed of the bishops of the West only, the popes, with the aid of false decretals, gradually arrogated the right of convoking them. The last of these which assembled at Trent, from 1545 to 1563, neither served to convert the enemies of papacy nor to subdue them. Its decrees, in discipline, have been scarcely admitted into any one Catholic nation: its only effect has been to verify these words of St. Gregory Nazianzen: "I have not seen one council that has acted with good faith, or that has not augmented the evils complained of rather than cured them. Ambition and the love of disputation, beyond the power of words to express, reign in every assembly of bishops."
However, the Council of Constance, in 1415, having decided that a council-general receives its authority immediately from Jesus Christ, which authority every person, of whatever rank or dignity, is bound to obey in all that concerns the faith; and the Council of Basel having afterwards confirmed this decree, which it holds to be an article of faith which cannot be neglected without renouncing salvation, it is clear how deeply every one is interested in paying submission to councils.
SECTION II.
Notice of the General Councils.
Assembly, council of state, parliament, states-general, formerly signified the same thing. In the primitive ages nothing was written in Celtic, nor in German, nor in Spanish. The little that was written was conceived in the Latin tongue by a few clerks, who expressed every meeting of lendes, herren, or ricohombres, by the word concilium. Hence it is that we find in the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries so many councils which were nothing more than councils of state.
We shall here speak only of the great councils called general, whether by the Greek or by the Latin church. At Rome they were called synods, as they were in the East in the primitive ages—for the Latins borrowed names as well as things from the Greeks.
In 325 there was a great council in the city of Nicæa, convoked by Constantine. The form of its decision was this: "We believe that Jesus is of one substance with the Father, God of God, light of light, begotten, not made. We also believe in the Holy Ghost."
Nicephorus affirms that two bishops, Chrysanthus and Mysonius, who had died during the first sittings, rose again to sign the condemnation of Arius, and incontinently died again, as I have already observed. Baronius maintains this fact, but Fleury says nothing of it.
In 359 the emperor Constantius assembled the great councils of